Dh Lawrence Sons And Lovers Quotes

Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.

She had borne so long this cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him.

And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them--

He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would never have happened.

...you love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And there I will die smothered.

Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spiraling round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core of nothingness, and yet not nothing.

That's how women are with me " said Paul. "They want me like mad but they don't want to belong to me.

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.

I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me.

Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman.

Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to pull the heart out of them?

How she loved to listen when he thought only the horse could hear.

You know, he said, with an effort, 'if one person loves, the other does.' …'I hope so, because if it were not, love might be a very terrible thing,' she said. 'Yes, but it is - at least with most people,' he answered.

To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort- to live effortless, a kind of conscious sleep- that is very beautiful, I think- that is our after life- our immortality.

There was only this one lamp-post. Behind was the great scoop of darkness, as if all the night were there.

She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstacy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.

He felt that she wanted the soul out of his body and not him. All his strength and energy she drew into herself through some channel which united them. She did not want to meet him so that there were two of them man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him into her. It urged him to an intensity like madness which fascinated him as drug-taking might. He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were fingering the very quivering tissue the very protoplasm of life as she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search and his voice gradually filled her with fear so level it was almost inhuman as if in a trance.

And she had discovered him, discovered in him a rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness.

You're always begging things to love you as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them -- You don't want to love -- your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren't positive, you're negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you've got a shortage somewhere.

- Te iubesc foarte mult.. dar undeva, lipsește ceva. - Unde? întrebă ea privindu-l. -O, înăuntru, în mine. Eu ar trebui să mă rușinez.. sunt un olog psihic.

Don't ask me anything about the future,” he said miserably. “I don't know anything. Be with me now, will you, no matter what it is?” And she took him in her arms.

With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and the strength to see herself.

It hurt her most of all, this failure to love him,

Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how to recite poetry and play the fiddle.

He toasted his bacon on a fork and caught the drops of fat on his bread; then he put the rasher on his thick slice of bread, and cut off chunks with a clasp-knife, poured his tea into his saucer, and was happy.

My shoes are made of Spanish leather, My socks are made of silk; I wear a ring on every finger, I wash myself in milk.

There were many, many stages in the ebbing of her love for him, but it was always ebbing.

You musn't mind people so much. They're not being disagreeable to you -- it's their way. You always think people are meaning things for you. But they don't.

The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.

He also wearied his mother very often. She saw the sunshine going out of him, and she resented it.

And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.

You have a place in my nature which no one else could fill. You have played a fundamental part in my development. And this grief, which has been like a clod between our two souls, does it not begin to dissipate? Ours is not an everyday affection. As yet, we are mortal, and to live side by side with one another would be dreadful, for somehow, with you I cannot long be trivial, and, you know, to be always beyond this mortal state would be to lose it. If people marry, they must live together as affectionate humans who may be commonplace with each other without feeling awkward- not as two souls. So I feel it. I might marry in the years to come. It would be a woman I could kiss and embrace, whom I could make the mother of my children, whom I could talk to playfully, trivially, earnestly, but never with this dreadful seriousness. See how fate has disposed things. You, you might marry, a man who would not pour himself out like fire before you. I wonder if you understand- I wonder if I understand myself.

You don't want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren't positive, you're negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you've got a shortage somewhere.

So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something. Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.

And these were the happy moments of her life now, when the children included the father in her heart.

You wheedle the soul out of things," he said.

Paul walked with something screwed up tight inside him. He would have suffered much physical pain rather than this unreasonable suffering at being exposed to strangers

You know," he said to his mother, "I don't want to belong to the well-to-do middle class. I like my common people best. I belong to the common people." - Sons and Lovers

But, Lord, if it is Thy will that I should love him, make me love him - as Christ would, who died for the souls of men. Make me love him splendidly, because he is Thy son.

But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common and rather dull. He liked them all, but they were uninteresting.

It was as if she could scarcely stand the shock of physical love, even a passionate kiss, and then he was too shrinking and sensitive to give it.

Make him stop drinking'. He prayed every night. " 'Lord, let my father die', he prayed very often. 'Let him not be killed at pit'", he prayed when, after tea, the father did not come home from work.

And as he went about arranging and as he sat talking there seemed something false about him and out of tune.Watching him unknown she said to herself there was no stability about him. He was when he was in one mood. And now he looked paltry and insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her husband had more manly dignity. At any rate he did not waft about with any wind. There was something evanescent about Morel she thought something shifting and false. He would never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. She despised him rather for his shrinking together getting smaller. Her husband at least was manly and when he was beaten gave in. but this other would never own to being beaten. He would shift round and round, get smaller.

They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high wind, blowing through the loopholes, went rushing up the shaft, and filled the girl's skirts like a balloon, so that she was ashamed, until he took the hem of her dress and held it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as he would have picked up her glove. She remembered this always.

But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty, was the blackberries.

She was so reserved, he felt she had much to reserve.

He felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his soul. He was unsettled and restless.

he had read in the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could find no other road to immortality.

Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.

Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire.

Yet there she stood under the self-accusation of wanting him, tied to that stake of torture.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly. THE END

It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.

In the context of Lawrence's rejection of the Freudian notion of incest and the close identification between author and character, Sons and Lovers becomes an exercise in deliberate ambiguity.

Cu tine nu comunic prin simțuri, ci prin spirit. De asta nu ne putem iubi în înțelesul comun. Afecțiunea noastră nu este dintre acelea pe care le întâlnești la tot pasul. Și totuși suntem muritori de rând, și a trăi unul alături de celălalt ar fi cumplit, deoarece cu tine nu pot fi carnal și, știi tu, a viețui de-a pururi mai presus de aceasta a muritorului de rând ar însemna s-o pierzi cu totul.

The tall white lillies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with perfume, as with a presence. Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear. She touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals, then shivered. They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight. She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers by moonlight. She bent down to look at the binful of yellow pollen; but it only appeared dusky. The she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost made her dizzy.

In summing up Lawrence's earlier novels and in anticipating the later, Sons and Lovers is of central importance to the whole Lawrence canon because it contains the psychological basis of much of the later doctrine.

La sociedad era horrible porque estaba loca. La sociedad civilizada es un despropósito. El dinero y el llamado amor son sus dos grandes manías; con el dinero muy a la cabeza. En su inconexa locura el individuo se identifica a sí mismo de esas dos formas: dinero y amor

To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent--that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being.

Why, what have I done to the children, I should like to know? But they're like yourself; you've put 'em up to your own tricks and nasty ways—you've learned 'em in it, you 'ave.

She never suffered alone any more: the children suffered with her.

Goodness, man, don't be so lachrymose.

I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully." "Call you 'sir', perhaps?" she asked quietly. "Yes, call me 'sir'. I should love it." "Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir.

Sometimes a good husband came along with his family, peacefully. But usually the women and children were alone.

But for herself, nothing but this dreary endurance—till the children grew up.

And looking ahead, the prospect of her life made her feel as if she were buried alive.

This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for Morel.

If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully.

So, in seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him. She injured and hurt and scarred herself, but she lost none of her worth. She also had the children.

Her dark eyes were naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. His eyes too were dark, and they hurt her. They seemed to master her.

Paul felt life changing around him. The conditions of youth were gone.

You, you might marry, a man who would not pour himself out like fire before you.

He was filled with the warmth of her. In the glow, he could almost feel her as if she were present.

Because I feel you did something to him - sort of broke him - broke his manliness. What did you do?" "If I broke his manliness, it must have been a very easy thing to break.

Morel fell into a slow ruin. His body, which had been beautiful in movement and in being, shrank, did not seem to ripen with the years, but to get mean and rather despicable.

He brought her forgetmenots. And again his heart hurt with love, seeing her hand, used with work, holding the little bunch of flowers he gave her. She was perfectly happy.

To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort—to live effortless, a kind of conscious sleep—that is very beautiful, I think—that is our after-life-our immortality.

She did not mind if he observed her hands. She intended to scorn him. Her heavy arm lay negligently on the table. Her mouth was closed as if she were offended, and she kept her face slightly averted.

On the whole she scorned the male sex. But here was a new specimen, quick, light, graceful, who could be gentle and could be sad, and who was clever and who knew a lot... And he scarcely observed her. Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak. Then she would be stronger than he. Then she could love him. If she could be mistress of him in his weakness, take care of him, if he could depend on her, if she could, as it were, have him in her arms, how she would love him!

What is it?" she pleaded softly. He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment. "You know," he said at length, rather wearily, "you know - we'd better break off." I was what she dreaded. Swiftly, everything seemed to darken before her eyes.

A flush came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down the west, sank into insignificance. On the shadowy land things began to take life, plants with great leaves became distinct. They came through a pass in the big, cold sandhills on to the beach. The long waste of foreshore lay moaning under the dawn and the sea; the ocean was a flat dark strip with a white edge. Over the gloomy sea the sky grew red. Quickly the fire spread among the clouds and scattered them. Crimson burned to orange, orange to dull gold, and in a golden glitter the sun came up, dribbling fierily over the waves in little splashes, as if someone had gone along and the light had spilled from her pail as she walked.

He went straight to the sink where his wife was washing up. "What, are thee there!" he said boisterously. "Sluther off an' let me wesh my-sen." "You may wait till I've finished," said his wife. "Oh mun I? - An' what if I shonna?" This good-humoured threat amused Mrs Morel. "Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft water tub."... With which he stood watching her a moment, then went away to wait for her.

She had a curious, receptive mind, which found much pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk. She was clever in leading folk on to talk. She loved ideas, and was considered very intellectual. What she liked most of all was an argument on religion or philosophy or politics, with some educated man. This she did not often enjoy. So she always had people tell her about themselves, finding her pleasure so.

THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row". Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. And all over the countryside were these same pits, some of which had been worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the corn-fields and the meadows. And the cottages of these coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood.

Her hand lay on the gate-post as she balanced. He put his own over it. His heart beat thickly. "But did you - were you ever - did you give him a chance?" "Chance? - how?" "To come near you." "Iw married him - and I was willing-" They both strove to keep their voices steady. "I believe he loves you," he said. "It looks like it," she replied. He wanted to take his hand away, and could not. She saved him by removing her own.

Light, old boy?" said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him. He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers. She was winking at him as he did so. Miriam saw his eyes trembling with mischief, and his full, almost sensual mouth quivering. He was not himself, and she could not bear it. As he was now, she had no connection with him, she might as well not have existed. She saw the cigarette dancing on his full red lips. She hated his thick hair for being tumbled loose on his forehead.

Hello!" he called, sitting on the stairs. "Are you getting up?" "Yes," her voice called, faintly. "Merry Christmas!" he shouted to her. Her laugh, pretty and tinkling, was heard in the bedroom. ... He waited a while, then went to the stairs again. "Happy New Year!" he called. "Thank you Chubby Dear!" came the laughing voice, far away. ... The family had breakfast, all but William. He went to the foot of the stairs. "Shall I have to send you an Easter Egg up there?" he called, rather crossly. She only laughed.

He sat down to dinner. She took the frying pan. "Now what business had you to be making rhubarb fritters," he said to her, "when you've no time?" "Because I choose to make fritters," she said. "And I shall be ready as soon as you are." She made the fritters because he was only home for his dinner this one week-day, and he liked them... "It's just like a woman," he said, "to go dabbling in the frying pan when she ought to be getting ready to go somewhere." "And it's just like a boy, to think he knows everything," she said. She put the sweets in front of him.

Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. He hesitated, expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn as usual for his bicycle. She remained as she was. He was at a loss. "Well - goodnight all!" he faltered. She spoke her goodnight along with all the others. But as he went past the window, he looked in. She saw him pale, his brows knit slightly in a way that had become constant with him, his eyes dark with pain. She rose and went to the doorway to wave goodbye to him as he passes through the gate. He rode slowly under the pine trees, feeling a cur and a miserable wretch. His bicycle went tilting down the hills at random. He thought it would be a relief to break one's neck.

I think she's a lovable little woman," said Paul. "Margaret Bonford!" exclaimed Clara. "She's a great deal cleverer than most men." "Well, I didn't say she wasn't," he said, deprecating. "She's lovable for all that." "And of course that is all that matter," said Clara witheringly. He rubbed his head, rather perplexed, rather annoyed. "I suppose it matters more than her cleverness," he said; "-which after all would never get her to heaven." "It's not heaven she wants to get - it's her fair share on earth," retorted Clara... "I thought she was warm, and awfully nice - only too frail. I wished she was sitting comfortably in peace-" "'Darning her husband's stockings'," said Clara, scatchingly.

She went indoors, wondering if things were never going to alter. She was beginning by now to realise that they would not. She seemed so far away from her girlhood, she wondered if it were the same person walking heavily up the back garden at the Bottoms, as had run so lightly on breakwater at Sheerness, ten years before. "What have I to do with it!" she said to herself. "What have I to do with all this. Even the child I am going to have! It doesn't seem as if I were taken into account." Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves one's self as it were slurred over. "I wait," Mrs Morel said to herself. "I wait, and what I wait for can never come.

Now it was spring and there was a battle between him and Miriam. This year he had a good deal against her. She was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she would be a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in herself, primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself living happily through a life-time with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud, in renunciation she was strong; for she did not trust herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the big things and deep things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency of the small day-life she could not trust.

She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He looked sideways at her as they walked. There was a wonderful close down on her face near the ear that he wanted to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the street, everything going round. As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him, and he took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe. Her ear, half-hidden among her blonde hair, was near to him. The temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there were other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to kiss it. After all, he was not himself, he was some attribute of hers, like the sunshine that fell on her.

They lay down, all three, in a meadow by Minton Church... [William] lay back in the sunshine and dreamed, while she fingered with his hair. Paul went gathering the big daisies. She had taken off her hat... Paul came back and threaded daisies in her jet black hair, big spangles of white and yellow, and just a pink touch of ragged robbin... "Has he made a sight of me?" she asked, laughing down on her lover. "That he has!" said William smiling. And as he lay he continued to look at her. His eyes never sought hers. He did not want to meet her eyes. He only wanted to look at her, not to come together with her in her gaze... "Can't you smell the sun o your hair?" [Paul] said. "Now, that's how you ought to go to the ball."... "Shall I?" she asked of William. "May I go like this." William looked at her again. Her beauty seemed to hurt him.

The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from the glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead, while the western space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there, leaving the bell cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across the field stood fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment. A few shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive; she imagined them bowing; perhaps her son would be a Joseph. In the east, a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite the west’s scarlet. The big haystacks on the hillside, that butted into the glare, went cold. With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and the strength to see herself. Now and again, a swallow cut close to her. Now and again, Annie came up with a handful of alder-currants. The baby was restless on his mother's knee, clambering with his hands at the light.

He danced well, as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance... Gertrude herself was rather contemptuous of dancing: she had not the slightest inclination towards that accomplishment, and had never learned even a Roger de Coverley... Therefore the dusky, golden softness of this man's sensuous flame of life, that flowed from off his flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her. He came and bowed above her. A warmth radiated through her as if she had drunk wine. "Now do come and have this one wi' me," he said, caressively. "It's easy, you know. I'm pining to see you dance." She had told him before she could not dance. She glanced at his humility, and smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It moved the man so that he forgot everything. "No, I won't dance," she said softly. Her words came clean and ringing. Not knowing what he was doing - he often did the right thing, by instinct - he sat beside her, inclining reverentially. "But you mustn't miss your dance," she reproved. "Nay, I don't want to dance that - it's not one as I care about." "Yet you invited me to it." He laughed very heartily at this. "I never thought o' that. Tha'rt not long in taking the curl out of me." It was her turn to laugh quickly. "You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled," she said. "I'm a pig's tail, I curl because I canna help it," he laughed - rather boisterously.

Do you think we love each other enough to marry?" he asked, definitely. It made her tremble. "No," she answered, truthfully. "I don't think so - we're too young." "I thought perhaps," he went on miserably, "that you, with your intensity in things, might have given more - than I could ever make up to you. - And even now - if you think it better - we'll be engaged." Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry too. He was always such a child, for people to do as they liked with. "No, I don't think so," she said firmly. He pondered a minute. "You see," he said, "with me - I don't think one person would ever monopolise me - be everything to me - I think never." This she did not consider... "You stop away, will you?" She did not answer. By this time she was very angry. "Well, what shall we do?" she said shortly. "I suppose I'd better drop French. I was just beginning to get on with it. - But I suppose I can go alone." "I don't see that we need," he said. "I can give you a French lesson, surely." "Well - and there are Sunday nights. I shan't stop coming to chapel, because I enjoy it, and it's all the social life I get. But you've no need to come home with me. I can go alone." "All right," he answered, rather taken aback... "And you won't think about it, and let it trouble you, will you?" he asked. "Oh no," replied Miriam, without looking at him. He was silent. She thought him unstable. He had no fixity of purpose, no anchor of righteousness that held him. "Because," he continued, "a man gets across his bicycle - and goes to work - and does all sorts of things. But a woman broods." "No, I shan't bother," said Miriam. And she meant it.